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Rob's Bass Bulletin March 2017!
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Dead or alive?

Welcome to Rob's Bass Bulletin for March 2017! There's a lot going on & I'm going to have to keep this edition brief, but I do want to take a moment to pay attention to one of bass playing's under rated tools - the dead note.

To make a dead note, fret any note, & play it like you normally would. Keep repeating the note with you're right hand, and while you're doing that, slowly lift your left hand finger off the fretboard, but keep it in contact with the string. As the string rises off the fret, it will stop making the note you had fretted, and start making a sound that's more like percussion. That's it! And since they sound like percussion, dead notes work beautifully in any music that would benefit from a little extra percussive energy - rock, funk, blues, jazz, etc.

One guy who's very effective with dead notes is Tower Of Power's Francis Rocco Prestia. This highlight reel is loaded with them. Here's Brain Bromberg making some subtle but very effective use of dead notes. Jerry Preston knows how to use them too.

Dead notes are notated with an X instead of the regular notehead, so in this example the last 16th notes on the 2nd and 3rd beats would be dead notes:



I have a couple of quick shout outs, first to Shakedown Austin's manager Paula Barkan for the great banner photo, shot at the Steiner Ranch gig with Lake Travis in the background. Also, to Jeff Keverline for building his own bass! Jeff's bass sounds great & looks spectacular - his bass building blog, ( with some gorgeous pictures ), is here.

Most of my gigs this month are private! I do have a couple of public shows, with Shakedown at Cafe Mueller on the 19th, and then again at Cafe Muller with Trio Verde on the 31st. Y'all may have heard that Trio Verde vocalist Jessica Green is moving to Boston, ( we're still getting Jess's permanent replacement sorted out ), the sublime Candy Declue will be singing with us on the 31st. April 1st will be a Shakedown show at Baker St. on South Lamar.

That's it for this month, keep the low end rumbling!

Rob.
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